Apple's 3G iPhone was met with much fanfare when it launched
earlier this month. The new phone brought 3G download speeds, GPS hardware,
and a new iTunes App Store among other things. The popularity of the iPhone
brand along with the buzz created by Apple generated sales of over one
million units worldwide within three days of launch.

The majority of the cracks are showing up around the edges
of the phone and near the headphone jack. Some people have reported seeing
cracks as soon as a day after receiving the phone, while others saw cracks
within the first one to two weeks of ownership.

Thankfully for most users, Apple's retail stores are
replacing the defective units free of charge on the spot.

Many saw Apple's move to a plastic back for the iPhone 3G
instead of aluminum (as seen on the original iPhone) as twofold -- the plastic
backing allowed Apple to reduce
production costs while at the same time increase reception for the greater number of radios within the chassis.

"Clearly, Apple is having manufacturing and software
problems," said independent analyst Rob Enderle. "A star product like
the iPhone does a lot of great things for Apple, but when things go wrong, it
can bring down the entire image of a company."

"Vista wasn't finished, and that's what the iPhone
feels like," Enderle continued. "It's been rushed onto market, even
though it wasn't ready."

Apple 8GB iPhone 3G is available for $199 with a two-year
contract with AT&T. The 16GB iPhone 3G rings in at $299 with a two-year
contract.

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This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

If you're going to fucking nitpick about an analogy you're likely going to find differences. It's to make a similar comparison, NOT an exact comparison.

His whole point was that something like this shouldn't have happened, especially since the problem seems to crop up so quickly. We can't expect full testing like automobiles and things, since they've been testing them for DECADES, so software bugs and such may go unnoticed, but glaring issues like this should have been tested for. Even checking a random batch could have pointed out this problem and the 360 one. Likely, it's just that they didn't care.

quote: If you're going to ____ing nitpick about an analogy you're likely going to find differences. It's to make a similar comparison, NOT an exact comparison.

If you make an analogy while ignoring scale, cost and consequence, you have made a flawed analogy.

The iPhone to Xbox 360 is a good analogy: an inconvenience caused by poor design and a failure to fix it during testing.

The iPhone to Firestone tires and Ford Pintos is a bad analogy: death and bodily harm caused by systemic failures at multiple levels within a government regulated industry.

I agree with you that it is about money, but it is not because they don't care, it's because they cannot afford the cycles required to do the exhaustive level of testing required.

However I still don't get how a minor crack in the case constitutes a "glaring" issue. Any new product is going to have its share of defects, that's simply the nature of product launches. It is probably lucky that it is only a problem with the case - other defects could be far more troublesome and costly to fix.